Starring James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, Aisling Franciosi

Written and Directed by James Watkins

Blumhouse / Universal – in cinemas now

A young family are invited for a country break with a couple they met on holiday, but as the weekend progresses, things grow dangerously uncomfortable.

It would be easy to dismiss James Watkins’s British remake of the 2022 Danish thriller Speak No Evil as nothing more than an efficient nuts and bolts psycho flick – part social satire, part West Country home invasion à la Straw Dogs.

But I’m going to put it out there. I love this movie.

On the surface, the elements are all extremely familiar. An American couple, Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise (Mackenzie Davis), along with their 12-year-old daughter Agnes, are befriended by Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) while on holiday in Tuscany. Paddy tells them he’s a doctor, working for Médicins Sans Frontières. They have a son, Ant, with an oral handicap rendering him mute. Everything about these new holiday buddies appeals to Ben and Louise’s liberal consciousness, so when, back in England, struggling with work and marital problems, they are invited for a weekend in deepest Devon (no phone signal of course!) it seems like a no brainer to accept the offer of a free holiday away from it all.

Of course, the horror-literate movie geek knows exactly where this is going, especially with James McAvoy dialing his (extremely) muscular manic charm up to eleven, reminiscent of a sort of psychotic Desperate Dan. We know he’s not what he seems from the delicious moment McAvoy drags a sun-lounger noisily along the concrete paving surrounding the pool in a luxury Italian hotel.

So, yes, the ingredients are straight out of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Horror Management but the cookery is Haute Cuisine.

I’m always wary of comparing remakes with their antecedents (I’ve set the tumbleweed rolling at more than one dinner party by daring to suggest that the Naomi Watts American 2002 remake of The Ring is way better than the Japanese original) but it’s worth looking at how Watkins’s reboot compares to the Danish version to understand why Speak No Evil is such a smart movie.

Make no mistake, Christian Tafdrup’s Danish chiller is a cracking piece of psycho horror. Anyone who has watched it (if you haven’t, it’s well worth a looksee on Amazon Prime) will have gulped at its nihilistic, quasi satirical take on European cultural differences. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to fear that in reinventing the tale for English speaking territories, Watkins might have emasculated the story in the way that the awful 1993 US remake of The Vanishing did to the terrifying 1988 Dutch original.

Yes, Watkins has (to a certain extent) eschewed Tafdrup’s 100-per-cent proof nihilism, but he has had the intelligence to replace it with something that adds depth and meaning to the story, elements that are actually absent from its perfectly worthy heritage.

Here, we aren’t just exploring the battle between manners, values and toxic masculinity, but looking at how the whole idea of family is integral to our survival and sanity as human beings. In a magical moment, McAvoy’s Paddy recites the whole of Philip Larkin’s This Be The Verse (‘They f*ck you up, your mum and dad…’ etc) suggesting that the sins of the father are inescapable, and this is pitted against Scoot McNairy’s Ben, full of doubt, constantly struggling to work out what being a man and a father means in the liberal West, constantly trying to change. While the outcome is different, Watkins’ ending is genuinely chilling in its own way, suggesting that this battle is far from over.

By adding 15 minutes to the running time, Watkins is also able to draw a far rounder picture of the family as a whole. Where Tafdrup’s children are ciphers and victims, Watkins gives the younger characters, Agnes (Alix West Lefler) and Ant (portrayed with breathtaking maturity by Dan Hough), real agency. Similarly the adult women have far richer stories to tell. Here, the evil depicted has cause and meaning, whereas in its Danish progenitor it is no more than a Nietzschean abyss.

Verdict: If I’m making Speak No Evil sound like a philosophical treatise then rest assured, the suspense and scares are all brilliantly executed and the plotting is a screenwriter’s delight. Not a line is wasted, every frame moves the story on and James McAvoy is at his believably manic best. But it would to spoil it by saying any more. Go and see it for yourself. 10/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com